


sown

by pipistrelle



Series: there is a season [14]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Lark's past, Rosethorn is the worst at accepting thanks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:02:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2178927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Here was her old life, planted in the soil of her new home, and she was grateful to have it as a reminder of all she had lost and of the good fortune that had found her."</p><p>Rosethorn gives Lark a gift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sown

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks to shaeberry/mustangscullaaay for informing me about what looms even are and how they work, and telling me what Lark's would be made of! I've had the idea for this little ficlet for an age but I would never have been able to write it without her. Any loom-related inconsistencies are purely my own fault.
> 
> For the record, I imagine Lark's old loom to be something like this: http://siubhan.boxhost.me/tiss/tisorte22.jpg
> 
> This little ficlet is set fairly early in Lark and Rosethorn's relationship, well before the Circle books.

"Mila bless," Rosethorn said, peering into Lark's workroom. "What happened in here?"

She saw at once what had made the splintering crack that had drawn her from her own work. The loom that had once dominated the center of the room now lay in pieces on the floor. Even Rosethorn, no weaving expert, could see where the sturdy beech frame had cracked, toppling the whole thing and making a snarled mess of Lark's latest project.

Lark herself stood to one side, shoulders slumped, head bowed over her ruined work. She had raised one hand to her mouth; at first Rosethorn thought she was holding back tears, until she saw that Lark was in fact biting at a splinter sunk deep into the base of her thumb.

"Stop that," Rosethorn scolded, reaching out to take Lark's injured hand. "Here. Let me." She pinched her fingers together an inch above Lark's palm, drawing them slowly, steadily upward as she had seen Lark do a thousand times, collecting stray fibers into a thread or pulling an embroidery needle through silk. Obedient to her call, the splinter dug itself out of Lark's skin and leaped to Rosethorn, who caught it neatly.

"Thank you, love." Lark managed a brief smile, then turned back and ran one finger along the frame of the broken loom. "It's a shame," she sighed. "I've had this loom for years. It was the first thing I got for myself, after --" there was only a brief hesitation in her words, a shying away from the burned place that Rosethorn still knew so little of. " -- after I came north. It was with me in the Mire -- it was the only thing I owned when I came to Winding Circle." She looked up at Rosethorn. "I know it's sentimental, but this old thing has seen me through a great deal. I'll miss it."

Rosethorn brushed her fingers in the wake of Lark's, hearing what the wood had to tell her. The frame was made of good strong silver beech, covered in lacquer and varnish, but the break had exposed the unvarnished heart. "It's old," she said absently. "Very old -- it was old when it came to you. It hasn't been a tree in a very long time." There was a little life left in the grain of the wood, from those long-ago days of soil and sun, but it was sunk deep and faded. Rosethorn had thought of convincing the broken edges to grow back together, but a burst of power large enough to wake these boards back to life would probably be too big for such a small, contained growth.

There was something else the wood was telling her -- something she understood very well indeed. She paused with her fingers pressed to the splintered edge, where the soft heart of the wood met the open air, and smiled crookedly at Lark. "It loves you. Very much."

"We've been through a great deal of trouble together." Lark smiled back at Rosethorn. "And a great deal of joy."

"I might be able to repair it, but it wouldn't last long."

Lark shook her head, her short curls bouncing. "Vetiver will help me get a new one. It's long past time. And it's fitting, in a way -- a new loom for new work, a new life. I'll go see her about it now, before the loomhouses close for midday." She held her hands out over the broken frame, palm-down, and flexed her fingers. The half-finished cloth slowly wriggled its way free of the frame, rolling itself into a frayed bundle that Lark plucked out of the wreckage and set aside. "I'll see if I can send some novices to clear this away. Don't wait for me -- I may end up taking midday with Vetiver."

"Fine." Rosethorn was hardly listening. Like her spools and spindles, the loom was a part of Lark's mage kit, and it was saturated with thread magic. Rosethorn could feel Lark's power humming in every groove and grain; to her it felt like a warmth, a softness, a flexible strength possessed by no other beech wood or leaf she'd ever known. The whole structure was far too magically charged to be reused. It would have to be burned, with strong protective circles drawn to prevent the leakage of thread magic into any other nearby working.

"That doesn't mean you can forget to eat midday altogether," Lark said.

Rosethorn blinked and drew her hand away from the loom. Her fingertips still tingled; she rubbed them absently, frowning at Lark. "I did manage to feed myself for twenty-three years before I met you. I'm not entirely helpless."

"Of course not." Lark ducked her head to kiss Rosethorn's cheek on her way out the door. "I'll see you for supper."

As it happened, Rosethorn did forget to eat anything that afternoon. She shut herself in her shop, not even stirring when a pair of novices went into Lark's workroom to load the remains of the loom into a pine box spelled for protection, which they carted away in a barrow. If either of them noticed that the loom was missing a piece, they didn't bother Rosethorn about it.

* * *

It took three days to get the new loom made and assembled in Lark's workroom. It was a beautiful thing, made of woods with properties of protection and grounding, and Lark found that she hardly missed her old one at all.

After a morning spent getting acquainted with the pace and feel of the new loom, she had taken a walk to the Hub, to stretch her legs as much as to fetch midday for herself and Rosethorn. The two students they'd had over the winter had gone, one back to her family in Hajra and the other to the Water Temple as a novice, so the load she left the kitchens with was lighter than she was used to, even with the usual added treats from Dedicate Gorse.

Arriving back at Discipline, she placed the covered basket on the table and stepped into the garden, shading her eyes against the bright noontime sun. Even after she blinked the sunspots from her vision, there was no green habit in sight. "Rosethorn?"

"Coming," came an answering call from around the corner of the house. Lark turned to go back inside, but something stopped her -- a tugging, gentle but persistent, at the core of her magic. It drew her to the corner of the garden nearest the gate, right up to the low stone wall that separated Rosethorn's domain from the rest of the world. There, in a patch of freshly disturbed earth, a sapling grew as high as her waist, spreading leafy twigs to the sun.

Lark was no green mage, but she had lived with one long enough to know that this was too straight and smooth to be a natural tree. It looked as if it had been sanded, though its twigs were rough with new bark. It called to her like her favorite drop spindle, and there were spots of lacquer on its trunk.

She rested a hand on it, but even before she touched it, it was speaking to her. Its leaves reminded her of scarves and shawls she had woven to escape the grief and loneliness that had settled over her like ash, burying her alive after her family had been torn away. In its bark was the memory of blankets she had made for the children of the performers' caravan that had seen her north to Emelan -- and of the nights she had spent in a drafty garret in the Mire, weaving because it was the only thing that gave her peace, even though the shuttle stuttered to a halt every few minutes as she doubled over with a cough that she never could seem to get rid of. The cold, the hunger, the numbing despair, as she pressed her palm against the trunk of this little sapling she remembered them all; yet here she was, safe and loved and happier than she had ever dreamed of being again.

A new loom for a new life, she had told Rosethorn. But here was her old life, planted in the soil of her new home, and she was grateful to have it as a reminder of all she had lost and of the good fortune that had found her. Carefully, she ran her fingers along one of the new twigs that had sprouted from the shaft of her old loom. It held the memory of so much misery -- but it had also given her both means and a reason to stay alive through the most desperate years of her life.

"Its roots are sound," Rosethorn said from behind her. Lark turned, hastily wiping her eyes on her sleeve, but didn't take her hand from the sapling. "The bark will grow out within a few days, I should think. I've a tonic that will keep the bore-beetles off until --" Rosethorn stopped, eyeing her warily, her grip tightening on the basket of clippings she held. "Lark?"

Lark let go of the sapling and held out her hands to Rosethorn, who came hesitantly, as though afraid Lark would burst into tears at any moment. She didn't, but it was a near thing. "Oh, Rosie, it's beautiful," Lark sighed as she wrapped her arms around Rosethorn, basket and all.

Rosethorn didn't resist, but when Lark let her go her cheeks were pink. "Nonsense," she said irritably. "It didn't want to leave you, you didn't want to leave it -- what was the sense in making you both miserable? Good strong beech knows where it wants to be, and it's no business of mine to refuse. This way it won't have to pine for you."

Lark couldn't help but chuckle at the pun. Rosethorn's lips twitched, too.

Full as she was of memory and longing and love, the sight of those lips was nearly too much to bear. Lark lifted Rosethorn's chin with two fingers, her other hand tilting the broad-brimmed hat out of the way so she could kiss her. At the first brush of Lark's lips, the nervous tension in Rosethorn relaxed and she melted into her lover's arms. It never ceased to amaze Lark how embarrassed Rosie was by any display of simple affection, when she never showed the least hint of embarrassment or shame about _this_.

Finally Rosethorn pulled away and cleared her throat. "I don't know about you, but _I'm_ starving."

"Of course. Midday's on the table." Lark watched as Rosethorn turned to go, but couldn't resist reaching out to tangle their fingers together, just for a moment. It was all the thanks she could give, for now. Any attempt to describe what she was feeling would only embarrass Rosethorn, and would probably fail to do justice to the gratitude and humility in her heart.

She was reluctant to leave the sapling, and might have stayed in the garden for another quarter hour listening to its flood of memories, but Rosethorn stopped on the threshold of the house and turned to peer at her. "Are you coming? Or am _I_ going to have to start nagging _you_ about mealtimes?"

"Gods forbid," Lark said somberly, though she couldn't keep from smiling as she followed Rosethorn inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Just a note: I'm thinking of rearranging this series so that the ficlets are in relative chronological order, more or less. If you think anything would be gained or lost by that, let me know!


End file.
